Keira Knightley is set to star in The Best Time Of Our Lives, based on a screenplay written by her mother, the playwright Sharman Macdonald, according to Production Weekly.

Knightley has been attached since the project's inception four years ago. John Maybury, who directed Knightley in The Jacket, will direct the feature set to go before the cameras in April, the week after Easter.

The film concerns the background to a real-life incident in 1945 involving Dylan Thomas, his wife Caitlin and another couple: Vera Phillips, who was Thomas's childhood friend, and her husband William Killick. Knightley is down to play Vera.